Full Pundit: Canada is blue, and there's nothing Marc Garneau can do

Full Pundit: Canada is blue, and there's nothing Marc Garneau can do

The future of Canadian politicsLawrence Martin, writing for iPolitics, brings news from Elizabeth May that she plans to push hard for some kind of cooperation between her Greens, the New Democrats and the Liberals heading into the 2015 election. Her price: “support for the idea of moving toward a system of proportional representation” — which Justin Trudeau is apparently against. Tasha Kheiriddin, writing in the National Post, doesn’t think May will get a very warm reception. And the Sun Media editorialists, meanwhile, worry that the Greens’ increasing popularity will split the left-of-Conservative vote so hopelessly that the Tories “might start moving even more to the political centre, and truly morphing into faux Conservatives like Premier Alison Redford’s Alberta gang.” Heaven forbid!

“In essence,” the Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert writes, newly official Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau “is asking a party that was just brought to the edge of the abyss by two nerds to select a third one as leader.” He will need to “convince fellow Liberals that he could lead the party to something other than a death with dignity in the next election,” she says, and she doesn’t like his chances. She’s not even sure he’ll wind up in second place.

John Geddes of Maclean’s sees no way for Garneau to compete without explicitly contrasting his experience against Trudeau’s lack of it. Based on Garneau’s comments at the campaign launch, Geddes says “his plan is evidently to use [the five leadership debates] to reel Trudeau in.” But in so doing, Geddes thinks “he will have to risk offending some inside his party — and maybe even feeding anti-Trudeau ammunition to Tories and New Democrats.”

In an utterly ridiculous piece for iPolitics, Michael Harris essentially argues that rogue page Brigette DePape changed the world — “hers was the Pearl Harbour of protests,” he gushes: “unexpected, deadly and full of consequence” — as opposed to accomplishing, let’s face it, sweet bugger all.

“Sigh,” sighs Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne, reacting to concerns over how much Canada seems to be “giving up” in negotiating a free trade deal with Europe: “access to government procurement in areas where its firms are now excluded from bidding, such as energy and public transit,” for example, and ratcheting down supply management. In a negotiating context these are concessions, Coyne argues, but in that they are good ideas in and of themselves, they are gains — and politicians ought to be out there arguing for them on their merits. “The whole situation is an absurdity,” Coyne fumes. “It’s like a hostage negotiation in which both sides have guns to their own heads.”

Or, as Paul Wells puts it on his Maclean’s blog: “Throwing open your procurement, telecomms, dairy and pharmaceuticals sectors to international competition is what free trade looks like.” The Ottawa Citizen‘s editorialists are also of like mind. If ditching supply management gets us a leg up in negotiations, then for the sweet love of mercy, do it. “Canadian consumers would be the main beneficiaries of dismantling or reforming that system, which keeps prices high for dairy, poultry and eggs.” Duh.

The Citizen‘s Kate Heartfieldnotes that the Conservatives are effectively planning to make cars more expensive, by mandating ever-tougher fuel efficiency standards, so as not to be seen making gasoline more expensive. This isn’t very conservative, she says. And it’s also pretty dumb, we say.

Saying it like you mean itPossibly outgoing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has finally apologized, and TheGlobe and Mail‘s Marcus Gee is profoundly unimpressed: “If being sorry means admitting you did something wrong, then, Rob Ford is clearly not sorry at all.” Gee’s paraphrase: “If you were so misguided as to be offended by the thing I said/did, then of course I apologize.” The Post‘s Matt Gurney, on the other hand, detected sincerity in Ford’s words, but little sense. “I never believed there was a conflict of interest because I had nothing to gain,” said Ford. Gurney, exasperated — as are we all — explains that Ford had exactly $3,150 to gain, and doesn’t understand why he can’t wrap his skull around this fact.

Duly notedOn the occasion of Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto’s visit to Canada this week, Amnesty International’s Alex Neve, writing in the Globe, urges the federal government to take an interest in Mexico’s, shall we say, spotty human rights record.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.